The Muppet Great Gatsby is a feature film script that is closer to happening

Our desperate call for an adaptation of the Muppets of The big Gatsby was answered: documentary filmmaker Ben Crew took the novel in the public domain and turned it into a 104-page downloadable script by a fan who marries Muppet antics with existential distress. My request for adaptation may have been ridiculous, but this script seriously justifies me.

Crew’s script, “Muppets Present ‘The Great Gatsby’”, may be a silly mashup of a novel you are forced to read in high school and a variety show of puppet comedy, but he said it has become a significant project when the January news cycle became too much to bear. “I knew there was nothing I could do about what was going on in DC and that if I didn’t get distracted, I would just languish in front of the news again,” wrote Crew in an email to The Verge. “That’s when I dedicated myself to writing this script.”

Image: Benjamin Crew

The final product is a script that plays on many of the Muppets’ strengths, while adding some fun original Crew additions. Miss Piggy practices karate, Gonzo and Fozzie Bear often break the fourth wall, and Kermit … well, Kermit is as good-natured as we expect. Since every good Muppet movie needs human characters, Crew envisions casting Tom Holland as narrator Nick Carraway and Taron Egerton as the abusive Tom Buchanan. The script also leans frequently towards the meta-humor for which The Muppets is known and, of course, features many musical numbers.

Crew used his knowledge of the Muppets to write the script, which he says he built over the years, bonding with his older brother through VHS tapes. The Muppet Show. This personal connection and the belief that there is something genuine and morally good about the characters made the script seem like an antidote to the anxiety that sickened Crew. And based on the positive responses to your post on Reddit sharing the script, it helped other people as well. You can read an excerpt from the full script below:

NICK CARRAWAY (CONTINUING)

I wonder what kind of man Mr. Gatsby is.

GONZO

Technically, he is a frog.

Nick’s eyes focus on the huge windows of Gatsby’s house. A lone curtain is open, could anyone be looking?

NICK CARRAWAY (VO)

All that money, all that property – but are you there alone now, do you have anyone to share with?

RIZZO

He’s monologizing internally again.

GONZO

Just unpack, we’ll get him out of this if he’s still going to dinner.

So the wheels are moving. There is a written script, a poster made and a new subreddit (r / muppetgreatgatsby) dedicated to the project. Disney could intervene and make things official at some point, but we have come a long way just with sheer willpower and ridiculous demands, so let’s do another one: we need this script to be made into a movie.